Mawsmai Cave

Beautiful visitor attraction near the famous Cherrapunji is Mawsmai Cave. This is the first show cave in Meghalaya, with entrance fees and opening times.

Khasi Hills are partly formed of limestone. As this area gets some of the heaviest rains in the world, here form numerous caves. Mawsmai Cave is just one of more than 200 caves in this area and it is comparatively short – approximately 250 m. But this is very beautiful cave, richly adorned with stalactites, stalagmites, columns and layered with sparkling calcite cristals.

Entry in the cave leads through rather narrow vertical opening. First – old – part of the cave is lighted, it contains several larger rooms including Mughal Room – more than 25 m wide, 25 m high and some 75 m long.

Further on there is the so called "new" part which does not have lighting. Inside the cave there is a "window" opening upwards, with jungle in sight.

Locals tell that caves were discovered by their hunters who hunted down animals living in this cave.

Maw Smai in Khasi language means – "Oath stone". Most likely this name comes from one of local megalythic monuments – Khasi land is very rich with them.

Often there is mentioned that the second name of this cave is Krem Phyllut. This is wrong – Krem Phyllut is another, much longer cave nearby.

Entrance into Puerto Princesa Subterranean River / Donabel and Ewen, Flickr / CC BY 2.0
Every year there are reported exciting discoveries of new caves and discoveries of new qualities such as cave paintings in the ones known before. But there still is a feeling that our knowledge covers just a small part of all these monuments of nature.

Though, those which we know offer a surprising diversity of unusual features and impressive sights.

Recommended books

Travellers in ancient times marvelled at seven man-made wonders located in various countries bordering on the Mediterranean. Over hundreds of years since then, civilisations have risen and declined, the world has been built and rebuilt, and many more works of human genius lie scattered across geographies and eras. Exploration and discovery has revealed more of nature’s wonders too, that stretch and humble human imagination. India, with an area of well over three million square kilometres, is a continent within a continent.

The Green Unknown is about walking, without a map or a plan, across the Khasi Hills in the Northeast Indian state of Meghalaya—a place of jungle canyons and thousand-foot waterfalls, where it rains more than any other inhabited place in the world, where each village has its own dialect or even its own language, and where the people grow living bridges from the roots of trees.